Mark Wilson

TiVo probably has enough data on users' pause, rewind and fast forward habits to automate the entire process for them completely (FF commercial, RW for potential nip slip, Pause 2 minutes, FF just wonky pixel). So they took this data and began reporting American Idol fast forwarding practices to see which contestant's songs were least listened to. And for 4 weeks in a row, they used the data to call the loser early.

But last night, TiVo's streak broke as their statistics pointed to Syesha Mercado getting voted off the show and instead, some dude in a leather jacket named Michael Johns was voted off in her place (sorry, we don't watch, we're sure his jacket is quite talented).

So either TiVo's system is generally fallible, TiVo's fast forward prediction does not take into account the margin of error, our fast forwarding habits say little about our hopes, dreams and aspirations, or Fox stacked the vote for some reason.